Truths
by Alliriyan
Summary: Some call it truth. But I do not recognise its form. It is hard for me to judge between the possible and the impossible. I don't even know when I am lying to myself, or being lied to. And so Akito searches for the wisdom of Gods gone before... -spoilers-


**Truths**

I am trapped in a small space.

I am detested and reviled.

My true form is hidden away, a source of shame, the reality my mother could not bear to see.

I hide from the world here, cultivate the rot and rile beneath my faded skin here, court imaginary friends that will never return to me here.

I dream of a real life that I can't quite comprehend anymore.

I am Akito.

I am a God.

I am almost a Cat.

But I love my closest, my dear ones, and the Cat holds only hatred and betrayal.

I am slouched at a low table, lethargically picking my way through the pages of old histories. The carefully dusted, usually avoided libraries within my realm are not my popular haunts. Old inks and unpleasant smells from the archaic bleaching and treating of these tomes catch and burn in my frail oesophagus. I'm searching for something whose elusiveness is only increased by the fact that I know it so little.

Some call it truth. But I do not recognise its form. I suppose it is more visible in the normal world, where curses and magic are distant, absorbing fictions. But in my world they are harsh and unwelcome and forever present, welded within my bones. They make it hard for me to judge between the possible and the impossible.

Because out of the billions of persons in the world, scarcely more than three or four handfuls are aware that I exist. That I, a fantasy, have real flesh, and weak bones, and trouble staying alive. Who am I to label these accounts ridiculous? Perhaps there _are_ places where men's heads are in their chest and they hop around on a single leg. Perhaps bear cubs _are_ born ill-defined and licked into shape by their mothers. Perhaps demons do exist in their thousands, eternally scratching at the membranes of their dimensions until they can finally break through and wreak havoc on us all. There is a demon not twenty metres away from me, and perhaps he follows his brethren in scraping at the walls of his cage. I can picture Kyo easily, hunched in front of the screen, scrit-scratching away with overgrown nail.

I am alone. The house is hushed. If I listen hard I might hear him at it, for his mind is gone now and it as good an occupation as any other to such a wretched creature.

His mind has gone. And mine…drifts. Too often returning to the only one of my cursed cousins who will definitely be staying with me forever. He has to stay, of course. Kyo is a wandering cat; he cannot be trusted to return to me on his own. The Cats have been wont to flee for as long as our records can remember, and the room is necessary for all of our protection. For the curse to be discovered beyond the influence of the family? No dragon to change memories, no House to hide in, no God to take the difficult responsibilities and decide who is taken in or turned away?

The Cat, in his hatred, would happily destroy us all. And the revelation could throw the world into turmoil, were we, the last remnants of magical eras, put on display to a disbelieving society.

The God is needed to rule the Zodiac, as humans exist to rule animals. But I do not remember why the cat gained immortality if he did not attend the banquet, and I do not remember why I needed to throw the banquet at all. Why did I need the beasts so powerfully that it made them need me in return, to govern the immortality I gave them? These are the truths I am searching for.

At length I turn another page. Perhaps this will explain why I made myself eternal. I need to know if there was a worthy reason; because I hate it.

I'm sick of dying, over and over. And Kureno's release from the curse has made me think that if I am not the God, only the bearer of the God; then my every death was the first time and the fear will never lessen. It is almost the fear alone that makes me so ill, the constant gnawing anxiety and nauseating dread of when will I die, will it hurt, how can it happen, I don't want to stop. And on a good day it is only the paranoia that all of my food is full of germs, that every floating dust mote is clogging my lungs, that my body is so fragile the slightest knock will batter me to pieces.

But rage makes me forget that, for an instant I am strong, lashing out to cow these Jyuunishi that cling to each other and their petty little loves; so easily forgetting that _I_ am the one who has loved them, drawn them all together and protected them throughout the ages. This rage that surpasses my terrors; I am not sure where it comes from. Only that jealousy and confusion curdle savagely inside me; the affection they proudly share that should only be mine – this 'love' they have for their little sluts – I don't understand the lights and hopes in their eyes at those times.

It is not the love I know, and if they are so sure that these alien emotions are genuine, then what is it they have been showing me all these years? They – they…It's the same, usually, the way they act. Same between the Zodiacs and Ren. My mother has told me that she and I, we have the real thing, love. She's said that love burns and is difficult to maintain sometimes, that the ideal of perfect bliss my cousins have been saturated with in the 'media' outside the House does not exist. She says love eats you up and to stay sane you have to hold people at a distance. If it means hitting them away, then both will understand that it is because the fire is getting too dangerous.

It makes sense mostly – more so than the shining faces of my family as they're directed at other people – but I don't truly understand. When my mother is cruel just to battle the strength of her love, why does it make me long for father, for Akira; instead of filling me with understanding? I do not believe that the Jyuunishi grasp it either, if I do the same to them.

Sometimes I'm so sure they hate me, but the thought does not fit inside my head. They are mine, mine to be loved by. It's impossible for them to hate me. _But maybe I am not the God, and maybe they hate __**me**_**. ** Maybe they love the God and hate Akito, but until I know which I am I will not know.

I've found an old scroll. The shedding flakes touch my skin and leave the memory of their passing when they fall. I want to scrub my arms clean, because this ancient parchment with its wooden rod slick with the patina antiques dealers love is filthy, absolutely filthy. But I have a strange intuition that it holds unsullied truth. The next intuition, that maybe I don't really want to know, I brush aside.

-

…I don't love Ren. I wish my mother would die, I wish I were able to dump my curse on her the way she has twisted me.

Where is the love that I braved eternity for?

Why am I, the God, the beloved, the bright star in their lives, why am I detested?

The memories this scroll is bringing back to me, the long lost wisdom and fearless solitude; the remembrance of what it first felt like to have a friend, to be sought out for my own sake…it washes into me gently, a wisp of recollection that easily overturns all the poisoned lies my mother fed me.

I know that this is real.

The Jyuunishi were not my possessions. They were my friends. And the cat, the poor, curse-ridden, blessed Cat; he was the precious first. The banquet where he had been tricked, the one where I set out all the celebrations and tradition I had devised; that had been the first cycle. That was when the rat, jealous of the favoured cat, had lied about the date and caused me to become livid at the cat that so casually missed the most important of occasions. When the cat jauntily turned up late the next day, I pushed a grotesque form onto him, brought about by the anchoring of our souls into a single human family for convenience, and the side effect of creating an elixir of life. It was an elixir born of the purest beauties, sourced directly from my own being, and it left me hideous, malformed, in exchange.

I had the excuse that one of the zodiac should have none of the limitations of transformation. In order to help the others. And over millennia, enslave them. For this poor, false justification I gave him double the curse of his fellows; and thirteen unlucky times as much hatred.

-

As my former lives poured back into my mind, I realised that I _was_ Akito, and Akito _was_ the God. Or Goddess, if we are to speak of truths.

I hold the truth in my heart and marvel at its glory.

But I look at the putrid lies that surround my family, and shudder at the ashes of cremated bonds we are all wallowing in.

I want to be clean.

I need to be clean.

Purification is necessary; now I realise it must begin with the grossest of the Jyuunishi.

I am entering his crypt, his living mausoleum; I am embracing him in my thin arms, and if his addled mind can still hear me, I am apologising.


End file.
